ProfessorDavid Levinson

Transport networks are not simply about moving people around faster; they're about connecting people and goods with the places they need to go safely, efficiently and with minimal social and environmental costs. Professor David Levinson's research focuses on how best to do this.

"My work looks at how we can better connect people and places, by providing more direct networks, by making links on those networks faster (while still safe and environmentally responsible), and by better locating activities with respect to each other.

"Each of these factors affects things as diverse as real estate prices, travel behaviour and economic productivity. For instance, a homebuyer might want to know how many workplaces, shops, parks or medical facilities would be accessible within 30 minutes of a prospective new home - whether by car, bike, walking or public transport. Similarly, a firm might want to know how many potential workers it would be able to access were it to site its premises in a particular area.

"Several emerging developments will affect our transport design needs, including the adoption of electric and autonomous vehicles and the shift from individual ownership to taxi-like but automated shared vehicles, or mobility-as-a-service, in higher-density areas. We need to rethink our infrastructure, designed for earlier transport technologies with different demands and constraints, in this new world to better serve people.

"Ultimately we want cities to function better, served by transport systems that don't kill more than a million people per year globally, that don't produce any net pollution, and that still get people where they're going quickly.

"Becoming a transport planner and engineer was a natural evolution for me. I grew up in the planned community of Columbia, in Maryland in the US, which is now 50 years old. Being exposed to ideas about how to make better places, I've been imagining lines on maps and redesigning cities in my mind since I was a child.

"I've been working in transport since 1988, and I joined the University of Sydney in 2017. Sydney provides a new set of opportunities and transport questions to examine, and the city itself is a great urban laboratory to observe and experiment on."